Citizens' Unity Commission

Citizens’ Unity Commission Monthly Meeting Minutes Friday, October 8, 2021~ 6:00 pm-8:00pm Community Development Conference Room, City Hall, 5th Floor 22 Lincoln Street, Hampton, Virginia Attendance: Katrina Bailey, Alice Capehart, Jennifer Evans, Chris Grady, Mei Stukes, Ellen Velissarios, Steven Wendell, Mary Wallace, Erica Spencer Absent: Justin Carolina, Trevor Hudson, Tamika Lett (Absent Notified), Luretta Ray (Absent Notified), Joiecel Riviera, Whalan McDew, Malik Perry (Absent Notified), Barbara Washer, Shuntay Tarver (Absent Notified) Staff: Imara Gabe Diaz (Interim Director), Hugo J. Morrison (Education Manager), Lola Perkins (Legal—City Attorney’s Office) Call to Order – Jennifer Evans, Chairperson @ 6:02 pm Roll Call – Imara Gabe Diaz, Interim Executive Director Action Items Item 1: Welcome and Introductions – Roll Call • Imara Gabe Diaz, CUC Interim Director, asked all Commissioners to sign in on the attendance sheet and called rolled. He also listed the Commissioners who were absent with notice. Item 2: Review and Approval of Meeting Minutes 11-16-2020 & 4-9-2020 • Due to a lack of quorum, approval of meeting minutes have been deferred until the next scheduled meeting. Old Business Item 1: Bylaws & Virtual Meeting • Interim Executive Director clarified the use of Virtual Meetings is only permissible by a voting quorum being physically present thus giving authorization to those Commissioners who have a qualifying reason to participate in a virtual meeting. • Lola Perkins from Legal presented the Electronic Meeting Policy again in hopes that a quorum would be reached and we were able to vote to adopt the policy. No quorum was reached during the meeting. The qualified reasons for Commissioners to participate in an electronic meeting is spelled out in the resolution and are listed as followed: • Experiencing a temporary or permanent disability. 1  • Experiencing a personal emergency; must be willing to identify the nature of the emergency (limited to 2 per calendar year) • This is only authorized by a physically present voting quorum. • The commission must ensure that everyone in the room can hear the voice of the remote commissioner. After being authorized, the remote commissioner can fully participate in the meeting just as if they were in room adding to all discussions and any voting matters. Item #2: Bylaws • The CUC bylaws need an amendment because of the secret ballot clause. It is the recommendation of the Legal Department to give Commissioners enough time to thoroughly review the Bylaws and make any recommended changes. Once all comments/changes that have been recommended and agreed upon by a voting quorum, Hugo or Gabe will submit a compiled proposed amendment list to legal. • In an attempt to align all commissions, City Council has recommended changes to bylaws. Therefore, at the time of the final review there may be some changes to amendments that were not proposed by CUC. These will be explained at the appropriate time. • Interim Executive Director Diaz stated that all commissioners will receive the bylaws via email for review and at the next scheduled meeting we will collectively share what proposed changes we would like to see within the bylaws document. Item #3: Vacancies and appointments • Any member whose commission term that was set to expire was frozen in place by City Council. You will still be able to participate if it is your desire to remain on the commission. We are not currently making any recommendations to Council for appointments. • Commissioner Alice Capehart raised a question on the floor concerning the quorum percentage and whether or not the commission could vote to change the quorum realizing 50% at every meeting may be difficult to achieve. ▪ Interim Executive Director, Gabe Diaz advised that Legal will be researching the matter of whether the commission has the authority to make the change or does the change to the quorum percentage have to go before City Council. Team Building Exercise • Hugo Morrison, Education Manager lead the commission into a team building exercise, I AM but I am not. Commissioners were tasked with writing 5 statements they can identify with debunking some common misconceptions and stereotypes. We processed this exercise together as a group. New Business Item 1: Department Annual Report FY2021 2  • Provided commissioners with a copy of the annual report and Interim Executive Director Gabe Diaz give a few highlights from the report, namely the Healthy Equity work that the office has been doing and how we adopted a strategy from the Virginia One Plan. • CUC Department led our Executive Management Team in developing a collective impact statement to achieve a common goal of unity and high performance. • Hampton Diversity Training—Hampton’s first ever designed training for the entire workforce. 76% of employees completed the training based around the core philosophy of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Cultural Competency, and Unity. Item 2: Community Equity Opportunities • We have been distributing P.P.E throughout the community working with different organizations and schools to keep our community safe. • Partnered with Sentara & Virginia Department of Health, through our Emergency Management Department to offer vaccinations appointments for vulnerable populations • CUC Department partnered with Hampton Redevelopment Housing Authority to serve vulnerable populations. We hosted several events and specialized vaccinations clinic at different locations throughout Hampton. • 249 Ninja Toy Drive; we are approaching our 5th Annual Toy Drive coming up and we will be sending out emails for volunteers as well as collecting donations. Item #3: Community Plan-Hampton 2040 • At our retreat the previous month, Assistant City Manager Bond rolled out the Community Plan. We will be polling groups through road shows, table talks, and forums about the community plan. We will be talking it about it in our group as well. We are building our comprehensive plan & strategic plan with input from various groups. Go-Backs Announcements Hampton Diversity College Level 1 is going well. The next session will take place in March 2022 which will be Level 2. If you know any youth who would like to serve on Youth Advisory Group, we are actively recruiting and our first meeting will take place in November. Interested youth can register at Hampton.gov/unity. Commissioner Wallace shared an informational sheet on ten things every American can do to foster unity and inclusion with the commission. Adjourned 7:59pm by Chairperson Jennifer Evans Next Meeting Date and Time: Thursday, November 18th, 2021 6:00 pm-8:00 pm 3